Bri

Didn't know that an anime was made of Tale of Genji , interesting, will have to check it out.

As for anime: just completed a marathon watch of Eureka 7. Received the last DVD last week and got round to watch it all. Mecha anime at it's finest. Wonderful character driven story. Lovable cast, great music and nice off-beat mecha designs by the master SK himself. Somehow it a bit felt like SDFM and Crest of Stars to me and thats about as high a praise I can give.

Glad it worked out alright now. While there is always a risk scans can end up on public spaces I'm very happy some MW members like Gubaba actually take the effort to make translations. With the way things are with HG its not that likely that we will see any official translations any time soon. I am starting to understand the spoken language slowly but reading it is a whole other ballgame.

Waiting for translations is no problem at all. Certainly when to protect the publishers in fact its the sensible thing to do as a fan, wish more people actually cared that much. Much like MW its self, it never ceases to amaze me how much effort people behind are prepared to put in to share the hobby with other enthausiasts. Abusing trust can so easily lead to people getting cynical and stop contributing. For what its worth thanks for those who make this all work.

Don't think there was much of an adult audience in the years Macross, Yamato and Mobile Suit Gundam originally aired. As far as I know adults watching anime has only recently become accepted in Japan. Manga was ok but it was uncommon for anyone past their twenties to watch anime.

The whole late night/OVA market puzzles me aswell. Seems 00.00 to 02.00am is prime time for anime in Japan. Wonder if people just tape it during weekdays or if the fanbase is more diehard.

Great piece of Fan work, keep it up!

Leona Ozaki's "Bonaparte" from Dominion Tank Police. How I would love to tear trough the morning traffic jams with that little monster.

The almost surreal comedy around the announcement of Newtype about the second season of Haruhi Suzumiya has left the fans in utter confusion. The website that announced it was a rerun has retracted its statement and turned it into something vague like the Newtype article. Latest developments on Canned Dogs They should call it the "Mystery of Haruhi Suzumiya". Glad SK doesn't troll the Macross fans as hard as Kadokawa seems to do.

During this real life comedy I managed to watch some more anime:

Lucky star: I enjoyed it. Hilarious at times and some of the sharpest social observations I have seen in anime.

Samurai X Trust and Betrayal: Nicely animated OAV, very strong atmosphere, but I fell I missed some references. Not having seen the TV series probably didn't help.

Ok, think night on the town and who is the ideal wingman...hmm:

Hikaru: Would take him to long to spot the right girl, so that's a no

Focker: He'd take both girls for a ride, no again

Alto: To many guys hitting on him to do his job: nope

Max: Hmm, only does his job if the friends a green-haired gamer: no

Gamlin: err... that would be evil: pass

Luca: Doubt he makes it past the door with his fake ID: nope

Guld Bowman: Usefull but he would take his job to seriously, poor girl: too risky

Lolicon3: hmm, not much chance running in to bridge bunnies I guess: nope

Kakizaki: He will take anything of your hands: Perfect! We have a winner

Mylene for sure. Love her distinct voice.

-MISA HAYES

(Let me explain before you lynch me: I think Misa Hayes, particularly in SDFM TV, was portrayed as being an od fuddy duddy. Not hideously ugly, of course, but certainly not sexual. She was stiff, unlady like, her hair had an old fashion hair-do that basically seemed to be saying "why do I have to have hair anyways?" She hardly used make up, her face was always plane. I bet you she never tanned, and was pale and vapid like an airlock...

Pete

Carefull there Pete a Coworker of mine got in trouble recently because she suggested a very light skinned collegue to do some tanning to look more attractive. The other girl got upset and filed a complaint. The coworker got sacked for discrimanatory remarks.

Robotech is bad, the dialogue is crap, I dare say the dialogue is sub thundercats, it's that freakikn' bad. And really, how anyone can favor mr exposition over Claudia's gentle narration I'll never understand, nor would I ever want to.

True, it's a shame the ADV dub, while having superior dialogue, has such horrible voice acting. Even Mari Ijima can't save the collective failure ofthe other VA's. Potential Robotech converts might end up going back if they listen to the dub instead of the sub (another reason for subs over dubs).

I t would seem that the city designers in DYRL and SDFM went for a different aproach.

SDF-1 DYRL has a fixed multi layered city in the legs.

SDF-1 SDFM has the city on movable plateaus (on rails?) that can rotate with the transformation. This city extends beyond the legs into the torso.

The SDFM design is actually quite clever. I compared Macross city to one of the smallest city states in the world: Monte Carlo (33000 residents and ten-thousands of tourists at any given time during the summer) and we are talking upper class luxury here. Monaco has a land area of 1.95 square km. To fit that into the Macross would require 8 plateaus of 400m by 600m (1.92km square km). The city has its own footbal/rugby stadium aswell. Asuming a ceiling at 30 m high per plateau.

The whole box would require 240x400x600m. Which would fit in the legs and torso when the SDF-1 is in ship mode.

Macross city is probably far more condensed than Monaco as it's far less luxurious reducing the size of the box even more. Heck they could still hold a Formula 1 race and have space for a 30.000 seat stadium;)

Other then the need for some dramatic shots the designers didnt cheat that much.

In episode 18 of SDFM the Macross is in robot form. Max and Miliya fight in the city. Global orders to open a hatch to drive Miliya out. When she and Max take of you can see the multiple layers of the city. As they take of vertically from the ground it would suggest that the city rotates 90 degrees during transformation.

it's amazing that so many of you have somehow missed one of the major keystones of macross, that it's not about how good you are, anyone can get killed any time in combat. your skill might have something to do with your kill count, but it doesn't have much to do with if you die or not.

an ace can fly for 3 months, shoot down five enemies and then be killed in combat. a non-ace can fly for 3 months, kill 2 enemies and be killed in combat. they both survived exactly the same amount of time.

I think you may have missed the point here. Good combat pilots rarely die in combat. This is the case in history and (Macross emulates that). If a pilot lived past his rookie phase he had a good chance of going back home alive. Amongst the best the number of fatalities is more often due to accidents then enemy action.

also pilot skill having less effect in a lower performance machine is rediculous, if anything pilot skill means MORE in lower performance vehicles. a prop driven bi-plane cant make up for pilot error with raw thrust, or massive cannons. the pilot needs to size up the situation, prepair, plan, get good position, match mettle with his opponent.

there are no heat seeking long range missles and explosive shells to use in a fokker, no 10:1 thrust weight ratios, no advanced avionics.

ww1 pilots were' probably some of the best and bravest pilots our species will ever see, since the fighter pilot profession will most likely be obsolete in a few decades or lifetimes (what with the plane's capabilities so far out pacing the survivability of the pilot).

Pilots of that era were very brave men but hardly the best pilots ever. I think thats more of a romantic notion then based in fact. Current day selection processes are far more rigorous and demanding. Chances are a that a large number of WOI aces wouldnt have gotten past the recruitment office of the airforces of the world. Military flying was in it's infancy and dogfighting was more like 2 gliders duking it out with machine guns then complex airmaneuvering. As you said pilot skill in those days revolved around anticipation and marksmanship, not aerobatics, fast decision making or multitasking. By the end of WO2 combat aviation had matured. I'm sure the skill difference between 50s jet pilots and modern day fighter pilots is much smaller then those between the WO1 and WO2 pilots.

I realize it's nice to use kill count as a means to identify "great" pilots, it's a nice easy number to count, pin to a wall and compair to other numbers. but piloting skill is harder to quantify.

It's easier to compare combat pilots as the result: succesfull missions, number of kills, surival rates, combat hours flown, etc can be compared. Pilot skill is more subjective and would require some aerobatics contest or simulation.

The pilots in Macross Frontier withstand G's that would atomize the very plane they're flying, let alone squish the pilot, how can the much more realistically animated mac plus and SDF characters compete?

I feel like i'm rambling, but yeah, kill count doesn't = flying/pilot skills to me. combat flying is it's own beast.

IIRC MF pilots had some kind of G-reducing equipment like inertial dampeners of Star Trek fame.

Comparing combat piloting is easier. Basara haters can rejoice as he can't sing himself to the top of that chart

Very nice work, hope Yamato gets round to make a Roy VF-1S TV.

Rankings are based on what is achieved, not on what could have been.

For example: arguably the best QB of all time is Joe Montana (or Johny Unitas, Dan Marino or a handfull of others). These players all had long careers that allowed them to achieve their great stats. No one will claim that great potentials who got their careers cut short or didn't have a good team are contenders for that honor. Luck and being the right man at the right time play a role. Don't see why that would be any different for pilots.

Hikky went the distance so he got the rank and the birds. Haven't seen any match up between Hikaru and Roy. There is no indication that Hikaru flew Skull 001 worse then Roy other then Roy getting mortally wounded in it.

Come to think of it: Roy, Claudia and Skull 001, the hidden triangle?

anyways, since Richthofen (and none of the other top WWI aces) ever flew in WWII, we'll never know how well they would have done.

Exactly, so it's safe to conclude that comparing Hikaru's skill to later Valk pilots is difficult as their equipment and tactics might have improved. The only way to compare is to see how they function in their own era. As Hikaru lived through SW1 while pilots like DD Ivanov, Roy Focker, Guld Boa Bowmen, Michel Blanc and Nora Polianski got killed. Allowing old Hikky to gather kills while they all got disqualified for the top ratings due to being dead ( which is arguably worse then losing a couple of Valks).

So the remaining contestants for spot 3 after M&M are Hikaru, Gamlin, Isamu and Alto/Ozma. As Hikaru both outranks and has higher kill scores (on screen and assumed from his in universe combat time) he is clearly humber 3

except that he was an exceptional pilot with the highest number of kills amongst his contemporaries (with the majority of those kill being against numerically and technologically superior enemies.) he may not have been an acrobatic pilot but that in no way diminishes his level of skill.

English and German planes took turns in superiority depending on which model came available at any given time. Arguably the best fighter in Wo I was the Fokker D.VII. Numerical superiority did not affect Richterhoffen as he flew with an elite squadron and usually had local air superiority.

fancy flying is like a trick draw in a gunfight; it may look cool but it's only going to get you killed faster. what makes a combat pilot exceptional is an ability to develop and apply tactics that play their strengths off their opponents weaknesses during the dynamic engagement of a dogfight; and Richthofen did it better than anyone in his day.

Richterhoffen was the best marksman of his contemporaries. Planes were so primitive that pilot skill was secondary to being a good shot. Boelcke was the key tactician who developed fighter tactics, Richterhofen build on those tactics. Irony is that both died by breaking the rules they had help develop.

as for his kill count being surpassed, it has as much to do with changes in technology and time than it does with pilot skill. most of the top scoring aces of WWII few for longer time frames than Richthofen and flew missions more frequently, the also had the advantage of better fighters and superior training (the aces of WWII learned from the lessons that pilots like Richthofen laid down.) Not to mention that by the second world war air power had greatly expanded and there were frankly more people to shoot down.

Also means there are a lot more people to shoot you down aswell. In WO2 piloting skills mattered more then in WO1 due to the greater capabilities of aircraft.

This said the original argument was that the top aces generally don't die in combat. I checked up some info and it would seem that Richthofen was the first and last top scoring ace in any conflict to die in combat.

Now we can return to our regular programming of discussing Hikaru's ( presumed lack of ) skill

actualy, hikaru is SUPPOSEDLY an established stunt pilot, the only stunts i saw him perform was a dangerouns flythrough of a valkyrie high speed pass and a verticle rocket burn. maybe in the flying circus he wasn't so much a stunt pilot as a warm body to fly the dangerous parts of the show. "look hikaru, sit in the seat, when i tell you, fire the rockets, try not to die" one of the criteria is that feats of daring do need to be on screen, hikarus aerobatics are all mentioned but not seen.

wether or not crashing planes is considered good piloting or not i guess can be a mater of debate. i'd also have to take exception to top aces rarely dieing in combat, i think they die just as often as anyone else. several top aces i can think of died in combat, several of the fling tigers, the red barron, the marine pilots that were killed defending midway, i'd have to research more, and i don't remember names.

imagine how good hikaru would be if he'd just get his hair out of his face.

In the episode 23 where Kaifun kisses Minmey Hikara takes on and kills 13 Zentran pods in short succesion, the skills are there if you wish to see them. Difference is that SDFM doesnt have the animation that later series have.

As for aces not dying often in combat. It's simple statistics. Only way to get those high kill numbers is by not getting killed yourself. Reckless pilots did not live long enough to reach top spots.

The US statistics are a bit skewed due to the practise of turning experienced pilots into instructors.

The Red Barons is one of the aces who died. While very famous he was not an exceptional pilot and later aces raked up much higher kill numbers. He was a great shot though but we all know what happens to snipers...

"Focker" is a mistake that stuck. Consider: the aircraft company is spelled フォッカー. Roy surname is also spelled フォッカー. It's pronounced with a long "o" sound, not a short one. All the promotional materials related to Macross, of course, have "Focker," but that's not what his name should've been.

cf. Michael/Mikhail/Michel.

Hmmm...guess I shuld've checked the Compendium before I posted. Still, my point remains: there are very few Americans (or Brits, or Australians) that we see on the Macross. Hence, I figure something really bad must have happened to America during the Unification Wars.

The Japanse use the English pronounced version of Fokker? In Dutch (and German) you would pronounce the "o" in Fokker (and Focker for that matter) the way you would pronounce "soccer" in English. A double consonant indicates the previous vowel sound be short.

As for the nationalities of the survivors of Space war 1. It's very hard to tell. The grand cannons were UN instalations and the crews/builders could come from any associated nation. Same with the moonbase that survived (where the SDF-2/Megaroad-1 was being constructed). Only hard data I've seen is that the number of human survivors was less then 1% of the world population.

In DYRL fightoperations are done in English but that again doesn't say much about the nationalities.

I feel Hikaru is heavily underestimated. If we are talking combat pilots then Hikaru is the only pilot thats a match for M&M. Hikaru is both an established stuntpilot in a flying circus and amateur aerobatics champion before he became a fighter pilot. That alone is enough to call him an expert pilot. Kawamori is a airplane fanatic and he knows his aviation history.

Losing a plane shouldn't affect ranking. For example: histories greatest ace Eric Hartman lost 14 planes while getting 352 confirmed kills. In general top aces rarely die in combat, but most of them have lost several planes during their carreers.

Kawamori is a airplane fanatic and he knows his aviation history. I'm curious about the following SDFM similarities to the real world:

3 Japanse aces who flew together during WO2: Hiroyoshi Nishizawa, Saburo Sakai and Toshio Ohta. Nishizawa was a introvert gaunt man who did not seem like a fighter pilot at all but who considered near invicible in his Zero and performed extreme maneuvers with his plane, Sakai survived the war and questioned it's cause. Strove for peace after the war and sought out and made friends with allied airmen, Otha was an outgoing man who was more at home in a nightclub then at an airbase. Died early in the war. Sounds a lot like Vermilion group

And then there was "Lilya", a beautiful Russian female ace whose nickname came from the white Lily that was reportedly painted on her fighter. Was killed in action after being singled out by the Germans. Took 8 Bf109s to kill her. Was a feared specialist in dog-fighting and enemy fighters tended to avoid her when recognised. Milia hunting down Max an ironic twist on this event?

I hope you also saw the previews after each episode, for the macross 7 reference.

Finally got me a copy of Ga Rei Zero. Hopefully i can watch it over the weekend.

"Watashi no uta wo kike! Booommmbbbaaa!!

That one is pretty much burned in my memory. Didn't expect to hear it in MoHS. Pleasant surprise

Hush you Rock and Roll and Jets are serious bussiness, so a guy who flies a Red jet while jamming a guitar is very serious bussines!

<snip>

Ultimately, to me Bassara embodies the kind of hippie "I can do what I want, regardless of the consequences" attitude-- which is great, unless you're in the real world. The reason why the military was so pissed with him, afterall, wasn't just because he was there-- it's because he was there and interfering, messing up their formations, causing people to hesitate and ultimately causing more casualties, at least at the start. As the military, they also had an obligation to protect him regardless of his own thoughts about the issue--which would suck up manpower and may have resulted in needless deaths. As a fantasy, Bassara is a nice one--but I don't think that Bassara's fans have (like him) thought through to the consequences of his actions. Afterall, his kind of attitude is the exact same mindset that megalomaniacs and dictators have.

As a fictional character Basara can mean any number of things to different people. You state that you see him as a hippie that endangers the lives of soldiers and himself and his actions only work through the plot. Which is fine off course, as everyones interpretations are their own.

However you wrongfully assume that all Basara fans share your view of him and see that same hippie and support his actions. The accusation that the fans don't think about his actions and by association condone the actions of megalomanics and dictators is both offensive and smells of a lack of critical thinking on your own part. The singular focus Basara displays is an a common character trait in people who have made critical breakthoughs in science, medicine, exploration, sports, music and politics, some would even say it's a neccesity.

Finished Haruhi Suzumiya. Absolutly fantastic series and I'll rewatch it soon again. So many anime references, homages and little plot details.

Halfway? I marathoned the whole thing in a day, and truly, highschool is wasted (like youth) on the young.

Don't have the time on any given day to watch 14 anime episodes in a row unfortunatly .

Aren't they working on a second series right now? Though I thought it was supposed to premiere this past season, may pop up after 00 is finished. If you haven't watched it, School Rumble is pretty damn good too, and a good tide over until more Haruhi pops up.

Nothing beyond hinting and rumours now. KyoAni is still doing Clannad After Story and another Full MEtal Panic so the next Haruhi anime looks pretty far away. There were even rumours that they might remake it.

Yea, there are rumours . New types march issue should contain more info, but many fans feels it's a hoax to sell more copies. The last episode of the manga is due to arive in April. Hopefully that will create the incentive for the anime. Surprising that KyoAni haven't jumped on the succes of this series more.

If BW has merchandising rights then that would explains HGs preferance fot using Mospeada only for their current projects I guess. Can't be much love between those two.

Looks like the characters are being positioned for the final shoot-em-up. Wonder who will end up killing eachother.